I would like to start by saying that not only is Roger Ebert incorrect in his belief that video games can never become art, but he has absolutely no right to even comment on them or defend his previous statements about them without first actually playing a video game. I was actually quite shocked by what I read in Video games can never be art. Ebert seems to really like one line that he was quoted saying, enough that he sets it apart and repeats it in his article. That line is:
"No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy
of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets."
I have never read a more ignorant sentence in my entire life. The reason that poets, filmmakers and novelists are considered great is because they have withstood the test of time. To say that video games could "never" be an art form simply because nobody has managed to cite a game that has withstood the test of time that writers and filmmakers have is just absurd. One might as accurately say that an infant will never make anything of himself because he has not already attained a college degree.
At one point Ebert says, "One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game." This is an interesting idea that he presents. However, it also presents a thick layer of ignorance once again. Either he is unaware that video games have advanced past a number on a score board and simple puzzle games, or he has not properly been informed that just because a game ends does not necessarily mean the player won. Games with dozens of different possible endings exist already. Let us make an example of a game previously mentioned in this blog.
In The Stanley Parable, the player has the potential to experience 6 different endings. The only ending that I would classify as "winning" is when the player listens to the narrator and plays the game as it feels like it should be played. The player is then rewarded with an escape to the roof, sunlight and fresh air. Most of the other endings include a horrible death. According to Ebert's logic, at what point would this cease to be a game, and become a "...representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film."? If the rooftop-escape ending were removed from the game, would it suddenly cease to be a game? It couldn't simply be a representation of a story because there are still 5 possible stories.
Ebert seems to enjoy throwing around cute phrases when describing the artful games that Kellee Santiago displayed. He used terms like "...prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie." and "...decorative interest on the level of a greeting card." to belittle the efforts of the game creators. Perhaps it is possible that once video games have progressed far enough graphically and adopted a deeper literary background, Ebert will finally accept that they are art. Then again, perhaps he is just a crotchety old man who is too used to looking backwards, that he'll miss all of the beautiful things coming in the future.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
The Stanley Parable, Panopticism, and Portal
When I first saw The Stanley Parable, I felt odd because the narration was occurring in real-time. Once I got over that, I immediately realized that the game had been set up for the player to act in a predetermined way. When the player arrives at the first set of doors, he is presented with a choice. The choice is less about going left or right, and more about deciding if he should listen to the narrator's voice or disobey. This choice reminded me of the decision in "Before the Law" but I believe that dead horse has been beaten quite enough.
The Stanley Parable is different from most games in two primary ways. Firstly, the interaction with the game is very limited. Almost every choice made by the player has a very large change in the outcome of the game. There are no NPCs to chat with, no items to gather, nothing to collect. There are only decisions to make. The second, and perhaps more important, distinction is that the player is put into a position from the very start of the game to be judged and watched by the narrator. While logic tells us that the narrator's lines have all been written long ago, the feeling that he has power over the player still exists.
This lack of interaction and constant feeling of being observed are two primary concepts of Foucault's Panopticism. Even though the player is alone, the game goes to great lengths to let you know that there are in fact many more people in the game and that they just happen to be absent today. It's fashioned in such a way that the player will feel like he is in the spotlight. In a way, this made it easier for me to ignore what the narrator wanted. Perhaps if there were many other people going about their everyday button-pressing, I wouldn't have felt so challenged to disobey the narrator.
The most interesting part of the game was the moment when the female voice interfered with the narrator's plan to crush the player in the trap. That moment revealed that there were many levels of power in the game world. The narrator arrogantly believed that he was in complete control of the situation. The female then assumed control in a similarly arrogant manner, then made a display of her power to the player as well. I found all sorts of symbolism and meaning in this single moment. Prominently, I thought that it was quite unlikely that this woman was in control of the situation any more than the narrator or player was. But whether or not she was in control was irrelevant to her cocksure attitude. The only thing that mattered was the fact that she thought she was in control, as did the narrator. I found the layers of power to be an intriguing addition to the game.
The way the player is constantly being shoe-horned into behaving a certain way or told to do specific things reminded me of Portal. The manner in which the narrator tries to make the player feel like he should follow instructions instead of thinking freely or exploring was very reminiscent to me of the way GLaDOS toyed with the player's head and attempted to verbally force the player to behave in a certain way. The storyline to the first play-through of The Stanley Parable and that of Portal are very similar. In The Stanley Parable, to get the 'escape' ending, you must listen to the narrator. In Portal, you must ignore the promises of cake and threats of GLaDOS to eventually escape. So, while you must listen to one, and ignore the other, the similarity is in the fact that by doing this, you are playing the game 'how it feels like it should be played.'
The Stanley Parable is different from most games in two primary ways. Firstly, the interaction with the game is very limited. Almost every choice made by the player has a very large change in the outcome of the game. There are no NPCs to chat with, no items to gather, nothing to collect. There are only decisions to make. The second, and perhaps more important, distinction is that the player is put into a position from the very start of the game to be judged and watched by the narrator. While logic tells us that the narrator's lines have all been written long ago, the feeling that he has power over the player still exists.
This lack of interaction and constant feeling of being observed are two primary concepts of Foucault's Panopticism. Even though the player is alone, the game goes to great lengths to let you know that there are in fact many more people in the game and that they just happen to be absent today. It's fashioned in such a way that the player will feel like he is in the spotlight. In a way, this made it easier for me to ignore what the narrator wanted. Perhaps if there were many other people going about their everyday button-pressing, I wouldn't have felt so challenged to disobey the narrator.
The most interesting part of the game was the moment when the female voice interfered with the narrator's plan to crush the player in the trap. That moment revealed that there were many levels of power in the game world. The narrator arrogantly believed that he was in complete control of the situation. The female then assumed control in a similarly arrogant manner, then made a display of her power to the player as well. I found all sorts of symbolism and meaning in this single moment. Prominently, I thought that it was quite unlikely that this woman was in control of the situation any more than the narrator or player was. But whether or not she was in control was irrelevant to her cocksure attitude. The only thing that mattered was the fact that she thought she was in control, as did the narrator. I found the layers of power to be an intriguing addition to the game.
The way the player is constantly being shoe-horned into behaving a certain way or told to do specific things reminded me of Portal. The manner in which the narrator tries to make the player feel like he should follow instructions instead of thinking freely or exploring was very reminiscent to me of the way GLaDOS toyed with the player's head and attempted to verbally force the player to behave in a certain way. The storyline to the first play-through of The Stanley Parable and that of Portal are very similar. In The Stanley Parable, to get the 'escape' ending, you must listen to the narrator. In Portal, you must ignore the promises of cake and threats of GLaDOS to eventually escape. So, while you must listen to one, and ignore the other, the similarity is in the fact that by doing this, you are playing the game 'how it feels like it should be played.'
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Kafka's "Before the Law" cont.
After reading the selections from Existentialism and Human Emotions and Nausea, I went back to take a closer look at Kafka's story Before the Law as well as the game adaptation of Before the Law. I was primarily looking for certain elements that would directly relate to the game ending and/or change the flavor of the story.
The first thing I noticed was how the man in the game starts under a tree. I was unable to ignore the significance of the tree because of how thoroughly it was beaten into my head in the passage from Nausea. Instead of the tree being a simple element of the game, like the grass, it became truly alive. It was there. It existed. The tree was no longer part of the landscape; it was now a piece of the story. After all, if the gate was there only for the man, and the gatekeeper was also only there because of the man, then why should the tree have not only grown just for the man?
If the tree is taken as a metaphor for food, abundance or vitality, then the man must walk away from these things to embrace his quest for the law. He must take risks. Once I began to think about this, I realized that I must be correct because as the man approaches the law, he walks by rubble and eventually has to traverse the most unstable terrain imaginable just to get to the law. To me this symbolized that the path will always get harder, but one must persevere.
Now, for the technical Existentialism part. The story and the game can both be read with Existentialism in a similar manner. Both of them boil down to one individual point: a choice. The choice to either wait, or throw caution to the wind in search of what you believe in. On one hand, it could be argued that the story is over-simplified through the conversion to the game. That is not what I believe. I now view the game as a wonderful and necessary simplification to a story that may have otherwise been confused by a casual reader. The story is trying to say what the game more elegantly states: Life is a choice. That is what it really comes down to. You can choose to do, or not to do. You may further yourself, or you may stop. Ultimately, you ARE what you choose.
The first thing I noticed was how the man in the game starts under a tree. I was unable to ignore the significance of the tree because of how thoroughly it was beaten into my head in the passage from Nausea. Instead of the tree being a simple element of the game, like the grass, it became truly alive. It was there. It existed. The tree was no longer part of the landscape; it was now a piece of the story. After all, if the gate was there only for the man, and the gatekeeper was also only there because of the man, then why should the tree have not only grown just for the man?
If the tree is taken as a metaphor for food, abundance or vitality, then the man must walk away from these things to embrace his quest for the law. He must take risks. Once I began to think about this, I realized that I must be correct because as the man approaches the law, he walks by rubble and eventually has to traverse the most unstable terrain imaginable just to get to the law. To me this symbolized that the path will always get harder, but one must persevere.
Now, for the technical Existentialism part. The story and the game can both be read with Existentialism in a similar manner. Both of them boil down to one individual point: a choice. The choice to either wait, or throw caution to the wind in search of what you believe in. On one hand, it could be argued that the story is over-simplified through the conversion to the game. That is not what I believe. I now view the game as a wonderful and necessary simplification to a story that may have otherwise been confused by a casual reader. The story is trying to say what the game more elegantly states: Life is a choice. That is what it really comes down to. You can choose to do, or not to do. You may further yourself, or you may stop. Ultimately, you ARE what you choose.
Kafka's "Before the Law"
There are many metaphors buried away in Kafka's "Before the Law." When I first read the story, I was first struck by the callous manner of the gatekeeper. He had a deceiving personality that would apparently tell any lie or use any trick to prevent the man from pursuing the law. This was a deep element of the story to me. Had the gatekeeper remained silent, or not lied about the other gatekeepers existing, there is a much higher chance that the man would have gone straight toward the law. I felt like this three-dimensional feel to the gatekeeper was lost when the story was converted to the game. I didn't feel threatened by the gatekeeper in the game at all.
The game was definitely a simple imagining of the story. The first ending to the game matched up with the story pretty well. However, the second ending was completely new material added by the creator of the game. While I agree with the way the man in the game may walk right past the gatekeeper unharmed, I feel like the content of the game added at the end completely changed the air of finality that the story had. The reason the story worked for me, as a reader, was that it was short, concise and definite. There was no air of ambiguity at the end. When I finished the game, it made me go back and reconsider what I had originally thought to be a rather elegant piece of literature. The fact that the book not only gave the man zero answers, but was in fact completely blank, raised many more questions than it solved.
My initial reaction to the ending of the game was that the man's search had been in vain. He traveled and searched for the law, only to be disappointed by a blank book once he finally managed to defeat the seemingly only obstacle in his way. Then, all of a sudden, that didn't seem quite right. Just because the book is blank does not necessarily mean that he has searched for something that does not exist. It may have been a cosmic way of telling the man that what he is searching for is within himself. Or, it could possibly have been a blank canvas for him to now write the law in a way he saw fit. Another possibility, while slightly more abstract, is that the empty book was not actually empty until he broke the law by walking into the arches instead of trying to find the proper answer for the riddle posed to him by the gatekeeper.
The game was definitely a simple imagining of the story. The first ending to the game matched up with the story pretty well. However, the second ending was completely new material added by the creator of the game. While I agree with the way the man in the game may walk right past the gatekeeper unharmed, I feel like the content of the game added at the end completely changed the air of finality that the story had. The reason the story worked for me, as a reader, was that it was short, concise and definite. There was no air of ambiguity at the end. When I finished the game, it made me go back and reconsider what I had originally thought to be a rather elegant piece of literature. The fact that the book not only gave the man zero answers, but was in fact completely blank, raised many more questions than it solved.
My initial reaction to the ending of the game was that the man's search had been in vain. He traveled and searched for the law, only to be disappointed by a blank book once he finally managed to defeat the seemingly only obstacle in his way. Then, all of a sudden, that didn't seem quite right. Just because the book is blank does not necessarily mean that he has searched for something that does not exist. It may have been a cosmic way of telling the man that what he is searching for is within himself. Or, it could possibly have been a blank canvas for him to now write the law in a way he saw fit. Another possibility, while slightly more abstract, is that the empty book was not actually empty until he broke the law by walking into the arches instead of trying to find the proper answer for the riddle posed to him by the gatekeeper.
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